


here lies an ember of what will be

by theholychesse



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Loki's here he's not even hiding, Minor Body Horror, Non-Chronological, but little does he know, he was never a kid in the first place, identity crisis, this is the story of a kid growing up into an adult
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-18
Updated: 2016-12-18
Packaged: 2018-09-09 16:14:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8898919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theholychesse/pseuds/theholychesse
Summary: thirteen is the age when boys become men
    Misha Havel is a rich kid who's fated to take over his family's multi-million dollar corporation. He has two sisters, two loving parents, a best friend, and a secret that he himself doesn't know.And it's that Misha Havel isn't real.





	

**Author's Note:**

> _a shapeshifter knows many things. and one of them is that when straying in one form for too long, you will lose yourself in it_

 

Misha barely catches the basketball that’s tossed his way. “Sebastian! Jesus fucking Christ!” He yells, clutching the ball with both of his hands up in the air, and lowers it with a deep sigh, and throws a high browed look at his grinning friend, whose hair is mussed up as if he’s just come on top from a brawl with a hurricane. “Watch it, asshole!” Misha spits out, grinning, and tosses the ball lightly back at him. Sebastian catches it with ease, and tucks it under his arm.

Misha’s hand rises to wipe away the sweat that’s gleaming on his brow, and his tongue rises to lick at the point of his upper lip, before it swirls over his bottom lip, and he heaves a breath and throws one leg over a glossy, pale bench, before sitting astride on it. The bright lights of the gym leave no corner unlit, and they’re bearing down on him like the summertime sun, despite the purple darkness settling home outside, just beyond the highset windows.

He feels the bench shifting underneath, and hears Sebastian’s rump smack against it, and he wheels around, one foot on the bench, and his head drops into his hand with a bobbing motion. “So.” He begins, fingers splaying onto his cheek with a light slap. “How’re you doin’” He says it with a flirty flair, and while he doesn’t quite wink, his brow does lower down and scrunch down on an eye, and then it jumps back with a springing raise of his eyebrows.

Sebastian snorts, and he rubs his nose before he lightly thwaps Misha on the upper arm. “Shut the fuck up, goddamn homo ass motherfucker.” There’s no malice in it. Only a curled kind of easiness that make Sebastian’s cheeks beam with pink, aww, lil’ cutiepie.

“Oh, you love me.” Misha retaliated, placing a hand on his chest, and scuttling closer, just the touch, by wiggling with his hips.

Sebastian’s brows raise, eyes bulge, and the edges of his lips stretch, as he looks away, but he doesn’t deny it. “Whatever, dude.” Sebastian doesn’t add anything else, and he’s still looking away. Misha glances at that spot, then back at Sebastian, and shifts on his seat, and then runs an incisor on the inside of his lip and moves so that the side of his head is facing Sebastian.

There’s a silence. It’s not quite comfortable, there’s an edge which Misha wants to tug on and wrap around his finger like the sliver of fox fur on his keychain, but it’s not too evident. The basketball court’s floor is shining like the surface of a lake, and it’s dead silent, save for the distant hum of some janitor scrubbing away at the floor with a machine.

Misha doesn’t know how much time passes before Sebastian speaks. And he starts off slow, not looking at Misha, but just like a bird in winter, it slides on over to only source of warmth and light that he has. “Say. I gotta say that—Um…” He seems to be wrestling for words. Misha looks at him through the corners of his eyes.

Sebastian scratches his head, awkwardly. “That, um—Fuck. I dunno how to say this but—“ His jaws tense, his eyes scrunch up for a second, and they’re looking at each other eye to eye. “You’re better, Misha.” Sebastian blurts that out, and it makes Misha blink.

Sebastian goes on and blithers some more before there’s a chance for him to chicken out. “You’re—You’re happier. Funnier. You’re more like my friend than you’ve ever been, I think. You seem just, y’know—“ Sebastian looks at the gym, at their school. “Happier here, and happier with the gang. You, you just, like, before an’ all, you’d slump in your seat in a way which didn’t quite scratch me right but now, you’re slumped with your shoulders like that, and that little light in your eyes and, and, uh, uh, um..”   
  
Sebastian’s chest slumps. Misha’s staring at him. “You’re just happier. That’s it. I don’t know what kind of rut you were in, man, but I’m like, I’m like really glad that you’re out of it.” His hand lands on Misha’s shoulder. It’s heavy and sweaty but it’s not shaking. “I’m really glad that you’re with us, now, Misha. Because you, Misha, are my best friend, and that’ll be the case even while rubbing elbows with worms, right?”

Misha thinks, and thinks, and his stomach is roiling lowly and quietly, and he’s playing with his thumbs, staring at his cuticles.

“…Yeah.”

* * *

 

  
“I’m home!” He hollers, closing the door shut behind him with the sole of his foot. He scampers into the hallway, and leans against the wall as he tears off his sneakers, throws them by the door, and pads into the kitchen. There’s a note on the fridge, and before he takes a look at it, he takes a banana from the bunch, peels it, and stuffs half of it into his mouth.

_Won’t be home until tomorrow morning. The girls are staying over at Rachel’s house. Your father should be home by midnight. Love you._

Misha clicks his tongue, before shrugging and stuffing the reminder of the banana into his mouth. Well, at least this meant that he could play his music out loud today.

Misha exits the kitchen, and slides past a space of cold air. He squints at it, stays still for a moment, and then heads over to the thermostat, and checks the heat. He shrugs again, and goes to his room, leaving his pale door ajar.

 

* * *

 

  
Misha looks over the wreckage of New York City, and gawks at the bodies of the great big space whales that the news has been allowed to tape.

“Misha!” He looks up, blinking. His mother is by the door, and once she sees that he’s looking at him, she comes in, and comes over to his bed. Misha’s legs slide closer to his torso automatically, and she moves his baby blue blankets, before sitting down, legs closed.

“What’s up?” He asks, blinking, looking up at her cool brown eyes with his own green ones. Her lips pull up into a shape that’s close to a smile, and, for the longest time, she simply—Looks at him.   
  
Misha blinks, looks to the side, and fidgets, deciding to place his laptop onto his bed, and not on his lap. She then reaches out, and smoothes a strand of hair away from his face, which makes him grimace and make a light disgruntled sound, but that just makes her expression lighter.   
  
“I want to tell you that I love you, Misha.” Misha blinks quickly and his chin dips, and his lips purse as the fingers of one hand knit with the hair on the side of his head.

“Yeah, I think I know that.” Misha says, finally. “Why—Why the sudden love?” His head raises, and, for a moment, she looks unsure. Which, well, certainly, is a weird way of thinking about his aloof, professional-at-all-times mother.

But the look is gone, her expression is soft, and so is her hand against his cheek, her cold wedding band pressing into the warmth of his cheek. “I just do.” Her voice sounds gutted, and her lips are wobbly, and, oh, oh, oh no, what in the hells is happening what the  _fuck_ —

She pounces on him, and holds him close to her skinny frame, and Misha’s tense and doesn’t know what to do with himself, his hands, his voice, but after a minute, after her fingers begin to rub the muscles of his back, he relaxes, and loosely hugs her back.   
  
“You’re my little boy.” She whispers, her slithering voice crawling into his ear and nestling inside his brain.

There’s a clump in his throat, and a smile on his face. “I love you too, Mom.”

Within the hour he’s back to messaging his friend on Kik, but his skin is tingling, and his heart is fluttering. His whole being is lighter than it was before.

His room is painted in blues and whites, with a cello in the corner, a basketball and a small hoop in the other, and a whole life’s collection of trinkets and toys are in chests or cupboards, gathering years and bittersweet nostalgia.  

 

* * *

 

In his blue and white room that’s littered with things that’ll cause fondness in the years to come, Misha is splayed on his side, peering with suspicion at his Art homework.

“’Draw a person.’” He says, out loud. That’s the task. Yeah, no goddamn way that Mrs. Waters is going easy on them with this one. He can’t just draw a person and that’s the end of it. That’s what she’s  _expecting_  him to do. But it isn’t what he’ll do, nuh-uh, because he’s cleverer than that but—If not a literal person, head, legs, arms, torso and all, what  _should_  he draw? His idea of what a person is? What even is a person? It’s—It’s a human, right, right, but in all of the Disney movies the talking animals and teacups are people too, or, at the very least, are referred as such by them so—What gives?

He growls, and comes this close to scrunching up the paper in his hands, stained because of the pencil marks he’d already erased. In the end, he yields, and throws it at the bin in the corner, that’s overfilling with Coke bottles and chip bags and tissues from his cold last week. It doesn’t land, and he hisses with disappoint.   
  
He flops down onto his bed, onto his back, and peers up at his ceiling. There’s a crack in the plaster there, from when he hit it with a rubber ball too hard. It’s dark outside, and his window sill still has some of the confetti that was thrown around from the early birthday party he had on Sunday. His actual birthday won’t come until the day after tomorrow. His parents have promised him a gift that’ll make his year. He hopes that’s true.

Misha closes his eyes, and thinks about waking up early tomorrow, and finishing this god-awful homework. After a moment’s thought, his eyes peel open, and he sidles to the table by his bed, retrieves his phone, sets the alarm, turns off his light and pushes his drawing utensils onto the floor, and snuggles under his covers and pillows.

 

* * *

   
“Misha.” Misha cocks a brow. Mr. Culku sighs, but keeps up that smile on his face, that’s got very little to do with genuine emotion and all with his image. “Misha. Please, answer the question.”   
  
“Why should I?” He asks, and his table oohs. Someone whispers a ‘Fuck!’. Mr. Culku is nodding, looking at the boys with his lips flat, palms facing the ceiling.  

“Yeah, yeah, I get it. Want to stick it up to the man but—Well, this really isn’t the place.” Mr. Culku is making a mistake, and it’s confronting a misbehaving student. Tut, tut. Mr. Culku’s losing his edge.

“Oh? What is the place, then, if not at school? In the work place? In a police station? At a hospital? Oh, but _wait_ , the ramifications there are just that  _bit_  larger than a simple question about what—“ Misha glances at his friends, then at the board, and squints. “—Moles. So, no, I’m thinking this is  _just_  the place.”  
  
Mr. Culku’s quiet, and his head lowers some. Misha’s leaning back in his seat, legs crossed, and the greying man sighs again, glances out the window, and then at his pale haired student. “Please, get out.” He says, in a small, defeated tone.

Misha’s face curls with smugness and he fistbumps a friend on his way past, and goes to see Cindy in the bathroom.

 

* * *

It is dark. Misha is sleeping on his side, clutching a fat pillow and pressing his face into it.

His bed dips.

* * *

 

The sun is setting over the city made out of brick and stone and rubble. Sebastian and Misha are walking home, shoulders bumping against each other, every now and then, with how close they were. Sebastian lives alone, and specifically got an apartment in Misha’s neighbourhood so that Misha would never be free of the bastard.

They’re chatting about their results on the math test, and, as time goes by, the topic shifts and churns and ends up squarely at nothing as they’re bathed in golden hues and their hoodies are keeping out the slight early autumn chill.

The silence is comfortable now. It’s a conversation in and of itself, and every little footstep they take is a vowel, and every shift of their bodies, eyes, and heaving breaths is a consonant.

“Remember that weird conversation we had in the gym, the other day?” Misha asks, the wind dancing over them, and not returning. Sebastian hums, not looking at him. “I’ve been thinking about it.” A pair of blue eyes slides over to look at him. “And I think you’re right.”

A woman with a stout bulldog is walking on the other side of the road.

“I mean—I think, I really think I was different then, right?” Misha’s eyes dart to the orange and pink sky. “I was—Angrier, I think. Angrier, and, and—Unhappier. Like you said, right?”  
  
Sebastian nods, slowly.   
  
“I was different. And I don’t think it was hormones because, well, you know I’m shit at Bio but, hormones just don’t make people—Empty, right? Because I felt empty then. I was empty, in a faint little way, underneath all of my words and all of my actions and my smiles and all.”  
  
His hand tightens around the strap of his rugsack. “I don’t even know why I was like that. It seems really, really weird in retrospect but, I just guess that I was—Like that.”

* * *

 Something cold and white and black slinks over his baby blue blankets.

* * *

 

Sebastian seems to think, and then they stop, on their dully lit sunset path. Misha isn’t sure who started it, but, well, it doesn’t really matter.

Sebastian’s looking at him, and there’s a weight in Misha’s throat that’s urging him to go on. And he does, his voice giving just the faintest tremble. “I—I was me, or I was in the in-between stage of tween and teen, and I was just becoming jaded, I suppose, with the world? Maybe. I don’t know, those years are kinda like a blur but also, um, in a way… the most clear memories I have? It’s weird. It is, I know, but it’s the truth and those years were just really just weird overall so—Mmm-hmm.”  
  
Sebastian waits.

“For the longest time I just—Didn’t get any of you? I didn’t understand anyone or anything, and I just wanted to—I don’t know what I even wanted but I wanted something, I remember that, but I didn’t get that, in the end. I know that.” There’s a pause, and a bubble of mirth comes out of his mouth. “Heh—It’s, it’s funny, actually. I remember wanting that something for so, so, so, so long but—Now? Look at me. I can’t even scramble together an idea of what it was. Can’t have been that important, right?”

 

* * *

There is a weight on his chest. There are legs straddling him, and when Misha opens his eyes and tries to get away in a kneejerk reaction, he finds that he can’t. And he’s staring up at glistening black eyes and he’s hearing the harsh pants of someone who’s very, very, very angry, or very, very, very hurt.

* * *

 

“Ugh, fuck. I’m blithering. I forgot what I even wanted to talk about—Fucking bunch of crockshit but, happens, right?” Sebastian’s face lifts, as Misha tries to lighten the murky atmosphere. “God, god, but just—I don’t know. I’m better now. I’m better now because I feel more like _me_ than anything else, and I feel like I’m able to look at the world outside and—Like it. I can and, and, and I-I-I  _do_  like it.”  
  
Misha makes a loose shrug, the throws open his arms, and displays the sunset around them. “For hell’s sake, look around—It’s gorgeous, and I know that now, and I feel that now. I know it on all of my levels, and before it was distant. But not? But distant. And so just being able to do this, to feel this all an’ all is just all kinds of—“  
  
“Great.” Sebastian finishes for him.   
  
Misha’s voice is raw and his eyes are just the little bit wet.

 

* * *

 

The shape has hands and it stinks of sweat and vomit and charred meat. It looks like a half dead man with more naked flesh than skin or bones, but it’s still a weight and it’s still dangerous and it’s still scaring Misha so, so, so bad.   
  
Misha tries pushing it off but it doesn’t move, he calls for help but then it clamps a cold, wet palm over his mouth and oh, oh god, oh god oh god oh god what’s happening oh god oh god—

The thing wheezes, and Misha’s trying to kick it off, angling his feet and knees to the point where it hurts. The thing wheezes, a wheeze so long that it sounds impossible to come out of living lungs. Misha’s licking and trying to bite at the palm and he’s using his arms to try to push it off but it just won’t, it’s an immovable rock and he’s going to die, oh god, oh god, he’s going to die he doesn’t want to die he’s not even thirteen yet he’s too young and just no nononononon—

“I detest you.” The thing says. It sounds like it’s swallowed razors and sandpaper, wet and rough and full of utter and complete malice. “You’re a pathetic little wretched thing who’s squandering what you have. You have no talent. No skill. You do not deserve the life you will have.”  
  
There is a framed picture of his sisters on his table. His phone briefly lights up as it gets a notification.   
  
Misha is still kicking and streaking wetness hits the palm of the thing.   
  
“You will be happy for no simple reason than that was meant to be. You will be wealthy. You will have a family. Friends. A _future._ ”  
  
It leans in and it looks like something beyond a nightmare, like something far, far worse than that. Because it’s here and now and it hates him so viscerally that Misha can feel, can smell it and see it. It makes him want to puke.  
  
“I am going to take all of that away from you.” It’s a promise and Misha screams but the hand keeps it in, and then the hands slides off his mouth and he screams, and screams, but it’s caught in his throat because there are misshapen hands with broken figures and bleeding sores on his neck and they’re squeezing, and squeezing, and squeezing—  
  
“I am. I am going to be better than you. I am going to take all that you had and what you will have and I will use it for a _far_ better purpose.” Misha’s neck is creaking, and he’s clawing at stranger’s face, but he moves out of the way and pressing harder on his chest, on his neck—Oh god, please, please nonono he doesn’t want to end like this he can’t he can’t he can’t think—

“I will be the person I was always meant to be. And you will be dead and rotting, unloved, unmourned, and unwanted, you filthy little wretch.”   
  
Misha can’t breathe. Misha can’t see. He can’t hear.

His neck hurts so, so, so very much.

In the next moment he is nothing.

* * *

 

Misha can’t help to laugh, and the sound comes out wet and pathetic, and Sebastian’s lips twist, he huffs, with the faintest smile on his face, before he pulls Misha closer with an arm over Misha’s shoulder, and musses up his bright brown hair with a frantic hand.   
  
“Motherfucker.” Misha blubbers, but he’s still laughing. Sebastian still holds him close and they keep on hobbling awkwardly together.   
  
Misha is light and happy and he has never wanted to keep on living this bad.

 

* * *

 

Something is panting. Something is shaking. Something is so full of rage that it is dying from it.

Misha Havel is a cold and glassy eyed corpse under it, mouth open and neck purple and fingernails bloody. Baby blue blankets are riddled with red. The something is bleeding and seething and its blood is hot and this close to black and it strikes the soft, soft, soft sheets with no noise.  
  
The something takes a great, heavy inhale, before it rises to rest on its haunches. Its breath comes shallower, easier. It wants to laugh but it can’t.

It, carefully, slowly, gets off the bed. Curled, twisted feet land on a smooth wooden floor, and accidentally kick a pencil, sending it rolling, loudly. It looks down, and sees a paper, an eraser, and that pencil.   
  
It looks up, and then at the boy who is still warm and who wears scarlet pajamas.

The phone buzzes.

People downstairs shift and move, ever so.

The creature looks at what it has done, and it thinks it just. And with a bending of will and a morphing of flesh and skin and shattered bone, the creature bears bright brown hair and green eyes and the soft round features of a child just on the cusp of their journey to manhood.

There comes the sound of keys jingling, and a door not so far away opening. The creature’s eyes dart towards that direction. “Misha!” A male voice yells. “Are you awake, kiddo? I got takeout, if you’re hungry!”

The creature glances at the useless meat in its—His, his bed. And he glances towards the direction where a man seems to be lumbering around, as loudly as any beast.

“Coming.” It murmurs, the words unfamiliar in his mouth, but the voice just right. He heaves an inhale, and takes a shaky step forward. “I’m—I’m—“ He stops. He swallows down his spit and something else, something less tangible.   
  
“I’m—I’m coming, Father!” And wearing unfamiliar feet but ones that, no doubt, in time will feel just, just right, Misha walks to the door, and one last time looks back on the body of the child that he has murdered.

And he finds it to his _utter_ satisfaction.

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah. This is really fucked up and, really, not what I expected to do today but!! It is still a plot I've been entertaining for a while? Idk. It might be really stupid and too confusing and if so--Spit forth all of your hatred and spite, folks!


End file.
